Akvelon is teaming up with Microsoft and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in their effort to help farmers, agricultural businesses, scientists and consumers with climate change and resiliency of food systems across the US. Read more →

INTERNET OF THINGS

The most demanding use of the Internet of Things involves the rapid, real-time sensing of unpredictable conditions and instantaneous responses guided by automated systems. This kind of machine decision making mimics human reactions, though at vastly enhanced performance levels.

Examples:

HOMES

Using a wearable alarm button and other discrete wireless sensors placed around the home, one can track your daily routine and alerting you to any serious disruptions detected in your normal schedule.

CARS

Ideas such as the smart lighting system allows a city to intelligently provide the right level of lighting needed by time of day, season, and weather conditions. Cities have shown a reduction in street lighting energy.

LIGHTS

Web enabled lights can be used as multi-functional lights, such as automatically turning off the lights when no one is in a room, or help to secure your home while you are away by turning your lights on and off.

CLOTHES

The clothes stream athletic performance biometrics like heart rate, movement intensity, and energy output to the cloud. Integrations give the wearer a unified experience of their athletic performance.

WATCHES

SPORTS

There are sensors and connectivity programs built into tennis rackets. This system allows athletes to track and analyze ball speed, spin, and impact location to improve their game.

BEHAVIOR TRACKING

When products are embedded with sensors, companies can track the movements of these products and even monitor interactions with them. Business models can be fine-tuned to take advantage of this behavioral data. Some insurance companies, for example, are offering to install location sensors in customers’ cars. That allows these companies to base the price of policies on how a car is driven as well as where it travels. Pricing can be customized to the actual risks of operating a vehicle rather than based on proxies such as a driver’s age, gender, or place of residence.

Or, consider the possibilities when sensors and network connections are embedded in a rental car: it can be leased for short time spans to registered members of a car service, rental centers become unnecessary, and each car’s use can be optimized for higher revenues. Zipcar has pioneered this model, and more established car rental companies are starting to follow. In retailing, sensors that note shoppers’ profile data (stored in their membership cards) can help close purchases by providing additional information or offering discounts at the point of sale. Market leaders such as Tesco are at the forefront of these uses.

In the business-to-business marketplace, one well-known application of the Internet of Things involves using sensors to track RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags placed on products moving through supply chains, thus improving inventory management while reducing working capital and logistics costs. The range of possible uses for tracking is expanding. In the aviation industry, sensor technologies are spurring new business models. Manufacturers of jet engines retain ownership of their products while charging airlines for the amount of thrust used. Airplane manufacturers are building airframes with networked sensors that send continuous data on product wear and tear to their computers, allowing for proactive maintenance and reducing unplanned downtime.

ENHANCED SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Data from large numbers of sensors, deployed in infrastructure (such as roads and buildings) or to report on environmental conditions (including soil moisture, ocean currents, or weather), can give decision makers a heightened awareness of real-time events, particularly when the sensors are used with advanced display or visualization technologies.

Security personnel, for instance, can use sensor networks that combine video, audio, and vibration detectors to spot unauthorized individuals who enter restricted areas. Some advanced security systems already use elements of these technologies, but more far-reaching applications are in the works as sensors become smaller and more powerful, and software systems more adept at analyzing and displaying captured information. Logistics managers for airlines and trucking lines already are tapping some early capabilities to get up-to-the-second knowledge of weather conditions, traffic patterns, and vehicle locations. In this way, these managers are increasing their ability to make constant routing adjustments that reduce congestion costs and increase a network’s effective capacity. In another application, law-enforcement officers can get instantaneous data from sonic sensors that are able to pinpoint the location of gunfire.

SENSOR DRIVEN DECISION ANALYTICS

The Internet of Things also can support longer-range, more complex human planning and decision making. The technology requirements—tremendous storage and computing resources linked with advanced software systems that generate a variety of graphical displays for analyzing data—rise accordingly.

In the oil and gas industry, for instance, the next phase of exploration and development could rely on extensive sensor networks placed in the earth’s crust to produce more accurate readings of the location, structure, and dimensions of potential fields than current data-driven methods allow. The payoff: lower development costs and improved oil flows.

As for retailing, some companies are studying ways to gather and process data from thousands of shoppers as they journey through stores. Sensor readings and videos note how long they linger at individual displays and record what they ultimately buy. Simulations based on this data will help to increase revenues by optimizing retail layouts.

In health care, sensors and data links offer possibilities for monitoring a patient’s behavior and symptoms in real time and at relatively low cost, allowing physicians to better diagnose disease and prescribe tailored treatment regimens. Patients with chronic illnesses, for example, have been outfitted with sensors in a small number of health care trials currently under way, so that their conditions can be monitored continuously as they go about their daily activities. One such trial has enrolled patients with congestive heart failure. These patients are typically monitored only during periodic physician office visits for weight, blood pressure, and heart rate and rhythm. Sensors placed on the patient can now monitor many of these signs remotely and continuously, giving practitioners early warning of conditions that would otherwise lead to unplanned hospitalizations and expensive emergency care. Better management of congestive heart failure alone could reduce hospitalization and treatment costs by a billion dollars annually in the United States.

AUTOMATION AND CONTROL

Making data the basis for automation and control means converting the data and analysis collected through the Internet of Things into instructions that feed back through the network to actuators that in turn modify processes. Closing the loop from data to automated applications can raise productivity, as systems that adjust automatically to complex situations make many human interventions unnecessary. Early adopters are ushering in relatively basic applications that provide a fairly immediate payoff. Advanced automated systems will be adopted by organizations as these technologies develop further…. read more.